The Meta

BA: Testing, testing 1, 2, 3

When British Airways (BA) opens the doors to the sleek, futuristic new Terminal 5 at Heathrow, London in two months time, passengers and staff will enjoy a stress-free ride through its flagship new terminal building thanks to a super fast, seamless communications network. The Fast Ethernet Metropolitan Area Network (MAN) designed, deployed and managed by BA’s long term communications partner Affiniti, has now passed final, rigorous testing. Up to 3,000 volunteers acted as passengers with baggage, passing through the various stages of check-in, baggage drop and boarding. The network is now ready for go live’ on 27th March 2008 – the date T5 opens for business.

This 18 month IT project, began in August 2006 and concluded in February 2008. It has required a dedicated team from Affiniti to meet the scale and stringent deadlinesthat come with the territory of working on one of the largest and highest profile engineering ventures in Europe. In February 2008 Affiniti will complete the final deployment phase, the installation of the Uninterruptible Power Supplies (UPS’s). The network is currently being tested for resilience and compatibility with all other T5 systems,thus ensuring that when BA moves its entire Heathrow operation – currently split between Compass Centre, Terminals 1 and 4 – to T5 in March, it is prepared for take-off with no technical glitches. </P> <P>The BA relocation to T5 involves much more than just a greenfieldnetwork installation. Behind the scenes Affiniti and BA have been working closely to ensure that it remains business as usual whilst BA manages the huge task of moving home.

Phil Hawker, Manager of Communications Networks from BA commented “Moving into our new home at Heathrow is a great opportunity to optimize the technology that lies behind our operation here. We’ve made sure that everything we’re doing has been well proven in the existing terminals, but bringing it all together in a fantastic new building will ensure a great experience for our passengers and staff. Affiniti has done a great job, working with our in-house team and BAA, to install and commission the network in time for live operation and I’m pleased to say that it’s passed its acceptance testing with flying colours.”